


Try Not to Break the Universe

by Carbon65



Series: Graceland snapshots [2]
Category: Graceland (TV)
Genre: AU: canon-parallel, Abuse of biology, Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Illness, Diabetes, Explosions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, abuse of physics, discussion of suicide, spirtuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:19:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are only so many times your cells can divide. There are only so many things you can do. You can choose to live a long life, or you can go out with a bang. Mike doesn’t know what he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try Not to Break the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDAL TALK**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> For the H/C Bingo round 5 prompt, "Explosions"

He’s not quite sure when it happened in that gray continue of work that was winter. He woke up in the dark, rode the metro to work in the dark, walked past the gray snowdrifts of the parking lot at noon, and took the metro home in the dark twilight. If he had to guess, he might say February. He knows Gabe Kelley died on January 29th.

Gabe and Mike were classmates at Quantico. Mike didn’t spend a lot of time with Gabe. Mike had been too focused on being the top of his class, not on interacting with his classmates more than necessary.

He has always known, intellectually, that working for the FBI could be dangerous. He knows FBI field agents are more likely to die on the job. But, it’s the kind of thing he knows, the same way he knows scuba diving while hemorrhaging in Great White infested waters is dangerous. He is aware, but it’s not something that will happen to him.

At Graceland, Mike had a real sense of danger. With Belo, Briggs, Badillo and Jangles. He knows someone killed Badillo, and no matter what Briggs and Jakes said, he’s not entirely sure it was Jangles. And, there was what happened with Eddie. In that moment, Mike thought he might die. But, might is a key word. This was his story, he was the hero. Not some tragic hero, not some intellectual hero, but the kind of golden hero out of fairy tales and myths. Oh, he might be flawed, but he had a bargain with the Gods, and they would not touch him until he had completed his sacrament.

And then, then he left the city and the state and the work he'd never wanted to do. He'd come home, to do the job he'd always wanted. And he realized it's not want he wants anymore. He thinks he wants warm beaches and deep cover and a dysfunctional house of kids who have barely left college, despite the fact that a few are well over thirty. When he was little, he didn’t want to be in the FBI for the sake of the glory. As a kid, he wanted to be in the FBI because he wanted to catch bad guys.

But, he’s not sure he can go back to that road. He’s not sure he can go into the field any more. Because while Gabe’s body was exploding, being ripped apart by the kinetic force of a canister of diethyl-ether and a match, Mike got sick.

Rose, who he seems to have acquired somewhere between the free clinic in Bethesda and a seminar on biological weapons where she talked about the way Salmonella affects immune system, understands it better than he does. Her words flow over him, the rant of an angry girl with no clear target.

They got drunk together one night, and they became friends. If Legos were the great equalizer and the toy that introduced you to your best friend when you were six, alcohol took its place at twenty six. They call each other occasionally to go drink and wander Washington landmarks. Rose is from a “city” in Michigan; she still gets excited about cheesy White House tours and diplomatic plates and rush hour.

Three days after he hears about Gabe, during one of those long weekends that is really only a vacation for people on The Hill, they meet at the National Mall. He and Rose are huddled together of the steps of the Lincoln memorial, wrapped in jackets and hats and sharing a thermos with some spiced wine concoction he suspects Rose made over a bunsen burner. (Rose has repeatedly informed him that the only thing she flames these days are slides, but he doesn’t know what that means, so he assumes she uses a bunsen burner for everything like Mrs Murray in the _Wrinkle in Time_ books).

It’s one of those bitterly cold days, where the chill and damp hang together in a miasma, and the air tastes like snow. Well, snow and smoke and disappointment. Low clouds and the gun-powered scented smoke from fireworks hangs in the air.

“What’s wrong?” Rose demands, wrapping her gloved fingers around the thermos. She’s constantly trying to warm her hands.

He shrugs. “A classmate of mine just died.”

“Oh.” She’s quiet for a minute, and then she passes him the thermos. He takes a long drink. Finally, her eyes light. “I’m sorry. Were you close.”

“No, I barely knew Gabe. I was well... I wasn’t close with many of my classmates. We’d drink together, ... but you know.” And then he wonders if she does. He knows Rose drinks, but he doesn’t think she’s even engaged in the Bacchanalia that he and his Frat buddies, and then later he and his Quantico training class practiced.

Rose nods sagely. “But, you barely said five words, sober that weren’t small talk?”

“And, I feel like it could have been me.” He finally admits.

Rose’s next question is almost lost in the thermos and her bright red scarf. “Jealous?”

“What? No.” He says, almost too quickly.

It’s her turn to look sceptical. “I mean, it... if you were... well... umm...” She buries herself in the wine, and stares the phallic nod to the first president. Words tumble out, in a cold, hard stream. “Sometimes, well..., sometimes, I wish it was me. Except that I want control. I want to go with a bang.”

He sniffs, surprised at the irony. “Not me. I want to die old in bed. No pain, just memories.”

She shakes her head, still staring across the reflecting pool. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?” He demands, snatching the thermos back.

“The hayflick limit.” She shrugs. “Well, the hayflick limit and the first and third law of thermodynamics and that corollary about God.”

“The what?”

“The hayflick limit. The number of times a cell can divide before it dies.” Rose yet again takes the thermos from his hands, and takes a swallow. “There are only so many divisions you get, only so many days. Only so many gas molecules at the heart of each star, to keep the fusion going. Only so many things you can do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and doing those things... living the way we live, or maybe the way I live, I don’t know... I don’t want to be some cubical bitch who types and answers phones for nine to five and stares into a microscope until her eyes cross and her micrographs start to blur. I’d rather that my cells explode doing something incredible, than that they die off and leave me with graying hair.” She brushes her pink touk off her head so he can see her dark hair.

“I am not going gray!” It’s a lie. He yanked three gray hairs out by the roots after DC, and the whole thing with Briggs. He pulled nine out in January, after Kelzie and the free clinic got him stabilized. “Anyway, I can do anything I want.”

“No, you can’t.” She finally turns to look at him. “You only have so much energy. It’s not infinite. Eventually, you’ll run out. Going forever, it would break the universe.”

“How did this turn into a physics lesson?” He frowns.

“Life is a physics lesson.” God, Rose can sound so sanctimonious. She takes a long pull of the cooling wine and makes a face. “Next time, more honey and less fireball.” Then, she pulls the pink device out of her pocket, and makes a quiet study of entering numbers.

They sit in silence, listening to the quiet woosh and beep of Rose’s pump.

“Wait, cells explode?”

Rose grins, biology is her love. “Cells explode and stars explode and people explode, except that it’s a lot prettier when cells do it or stars do it. I’d rather be a cell, or a star. I’ll show you a movie, sometime.”

They watch the people go by, living out their physics lesson and burning through finite energy.

“I want my life to mean something.” Rose, of course, breaks the silence. “I want to be in control of my destiny, live and die by my terms. I want to be a star that uses my energy and goes supernova.”

“You’re talking about killing yourself.” He feels an uncomfortable gnawing at the pit of his stomach.

She shrugs. “I’m talking about burning myself out. And, maybe, at the end, not dragging myself through another fifty years with nothing left. I’ve done plenty of burning, plenty of exploding already. My cells, they're going." She shrugs. "Neuropathy. Better than retinopathy, I guess. I don’t have that much left. My cells, they've already exploded and reached their hay flick limit.”

“That’s fucked up.” He angrily gets up from the steps, bouncing a few times to return feeling to his frozen ass.

“Give yourself another ten, twenty years. See how you feel then. You’re going to go Supernova, Mike. You’re not going to burn slowly. You’ll explode, too.” Rose, always one to have the last word, picks up her thermos and hurries off to catch her train.

It’s the last time they talk, seriously. Rose starts a new project that “eats her life” and he gets involved in the trafficking ring.

Six, seven months later, on a hot, dry night at a bus depot in Southern California, he looks into a fireball rising into the night. He remembers Gabe and the day on the Lincoln Memorial. He thinks that Rose might be right. He’ll give anything to catch the Solanos, even his life.

**Author's Note:**

> The hay flick limit is a real thing that happens in almost all cells, except cancer cells. You can make any type of cell explode, under the right circumstances. High salt (or high sugar) concentrations are actually a really good way to do this.
> 
> Peripheral neuropathy is one of the common complications of diabetes, and it can happen as early as ten or fifteen years in.


End file.
